NOCTURNAL. To 16 May.
London.
NOCTURNAL
by Juan Mayorga translated by David Johnston.
Gate Theatre To 16 May 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pmMat Sat 3pm.
Audio-described 2 May 3pm (+Touch Tour 2pm).
Runs 1hr 30min No interval.
TICKETS: 020 7229 0706.
www.gatetheatre.co.uk
review: Timothy Ramsden 21 April.
The ordinary made strange with usual Gate expertise.
How much urban alienation do we need? A good part of any reaction to the Gate’s British premiere of Spanish writer Juan Mayorga’s play will depend on whether it’s a first, third or umpteenth encounter with such material, a play-world so ordinary it’s disturbingly strange.
A man sitting in a café is accused of being an illegal immigrant by his neighbour, who uses the knowledge to give himself a sense of significance. This second man treats his wife on the edge of command and protection. She’s addicted to a late-night TV phone-in on insomnia, whose doctor-presenter mixes medicine and astrology.
Disorientation runs through the play in manner as well as matter, as through a fair number at least as far back as Botho Strauss’s The Park.
As so often with dramatic studies in urban alienation, matters unfold gradually, the gaps in audience awareness seeming sinister-edged, moments made disturbing by the unreal impact of hyper-real detail – matched in the projected set’s self-conscious realism, including a billboard scrolling outside an office window with predictable phasing, increasing the production’s innate sense of suppressed tension.
Mayorga’s particular angle is the night-time element, the dark time when people are at home together, yet may be alone in an inability to sleep, when lights unaccountably crackle into darkness.
It could seem creepily involving or a slow way to say very little, with an alienation at odds with the modish idea of smart urban living. But Lyndsey Turner’ Gate production is faultlessly played.
How Paul Hunter’s character lit on the truth about Justin Salinger’s immigrant status remains unclear; though the human statistics available in his routine job suggest a possibility, in a world where stored information loosens people’s control on their own lives. What matters is the way Hunter quietly uses his knowledge to force a simulacrum of friendship, while Salinger’s character fatalistically accepts things.
There’s similar ambiguity in Hunter’s casual-seeming talk to his sleepless wife, an ever-anxious Amanda Lawrence. Justine Mitchell handles well the least-developed role (the play focuses more on men than women generally), while Matthew Dunster’s astrological TV doctor mixes sympathy and disdain.
Doctor: Matthew Dunster.
Short Man: Paul Hunter.
Short Woman: Amanda Lawrence.
Tall Woman: Justine Mitchell.
Tall Man: Justin Salinger.
Director: Lyndsey Turner.
Designers: Matthew Walker, Hannah Clark.
Lighting: Katharine Williams.
Sound: Christopher Shutt.
Animator: Matthew Walker.
Assistant director: Freya Elliott.
2009-04-24 08:19:12